


Strip the Soul

by ptycster



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Detectives, Gen, Horror, Mysticism, Other, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptycster/pseuds/ptycster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dream is only a dream... Or is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strip the Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Обнажая душу](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2418332) by [Charaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charaa/pseuds/Charaa). 



> Spoilers to Season 3.

_‘I killed two girls.’_   


Morgan Lamb listens to Edward Buchan attentively and never offers her personal opinion. An excellent shrink, they say.   


Ed has never been popular with girls; he’s no dreamboat for guys either. But old papers and documents... He adores them, and he knows that they love him back.  


He’s always been fascinated by old photographs, with their dog-eared edges and faded colours. He prefers them to recent photos. New pictures feel all wrong to him, too sharp, too bright, too revealing of the soul, even when they show a stomach ripped open or an arm cut off.  


Miles does not frequent the archive but sometimes he pops in:  


‘Hell, Ed. You remind me of the catfish my son keeps in his room. Are you going to spend all your life burrowing into your books like those damn catfish in the ooze?’  
A heavy box falls from a bookshelf missing the DS’s temple by a mere inch.   


When Miles leaves, the archive papers whisper reassuringly and its rows of bookshelves close in. For the rest of that day, folders with the cases Ed needs seem to jump into his hands, nuzzling into his palms. Like puppies. Faded papers hiding countless mysteries feel rough under his fingers, and this feeling is also strangely reassuring.   


_‘I killed two girls.’_   


He, who knows each and every folder in his archive, who can describe the contents of any shelf any time day or night – he failed to see those two cases while they were right there, under his very nose!   
This must not happen again.  


Ed has always wanted not just memorise all the cases – what he wanted was  _empathy_. Poisonings, murders, assaults, robbery and theft – life and death are entwined inside each folder. And all folders want to share their burden, become one with the man, with him, engulf him – and get dissolved in him.   


Day after day Ed reached out to his folders; and night after night those two girls he failed to save reached out to him. A rampant stream of images flowed like a waterfall, burned like liquid fire. It reminded him of his first “dare-you” LSD trip thirty years ago, at the university. It had seemed to him back then that tiny golden fish were swarming in his bloodstream, each golden spark casting a scorching shadow of an image. Now he saw these images each night in his dreams. Two girls are dying of the fire that burns them alive from inside. Their remains are dismembered in the basement, their bodies cut and packed into a dozen of bundles neatly wrapped in film. Clay flower pots are filled in: a layer of drainage, then a layer of soil, then a girl’s head (straight up), then a couple more centimetres of soil and, finally, a finishing touch – a lilac bush.

Ed wasn’t getting it. What did the dead want from him? Did they want to share something? Or to take him with them, make him one of them?  


_‘Post-traumatic stress disorder may manifest itself in all sorts of symptoms, Ed. And that’s what you have – a PST, even though you are not a former Iraq trooper or victim of assault.’_   


But now Dr Lamb has joined the ranks of his night dream guests.   


Again and again, she dies at the parking lot and he sees a thin ribbon cutting into her throat. He sees how she struggles but fails to loosen the ribbon, then tries to nail the killer and finally subsides on the ground. He sees the killer leaving her body by the car with her arms spread and the pink ribbon coiled around her neck.  


Or she dies next to a monument, at night. He sees her running barefoot, in a bathrobe. He sees each stroke of the knife and the reflection of the street light in the bloodstained blade. He hears the dull thumps and her gurgling and sees the bubbles of blood on her lips and the hole in her chest. The heavy blade moves smoothly dividing the muscles. Blood darkens the dry leaves covering the ground.  


And sometimes she is lying among broken glass in a room which seems faintly familiar to him. She is in a white robe that police usually wear at crime scenes. He wonders why she would wear one. Blood seems dark, almost black on the white cloth.  


Next day after such dreams, his folders usually rustle reassuringly and act sympathetically; they stick to their proper places on the shelves and open at the right pages when he needs them. But they can’t help him. Except that, all of a sudden, an old selection of clippings about an old case has turned up. In the 1930-s, an apprehended killer’s mother finished off a victim her son had planned to kill never had the time. Ed thought those materials had been lost for good.   


But that room which seems familiar keeps bothering him. It takes him two nights – and two dreams – to finally recall the place.   


Next morning, the interrogation room is empty and full of light. ‘You won’t find anything here that you haven’t seen before, that’s for sure,’ Miles grumbles before leaving him alone in the room.  
A row of chairs against the wall. Two armchairs by the coffee table. Wooden panels, light beige curtains, a few pictures. And naturally, no Morgan Lamb’s body on the floor. Just clean carpeting.   


Just a dream.

Then he stumbles upon the monument from his dream – quite by chance, it just catches his eye through the foliage as he rides the bus. Dr Lamb’s apartment is only a couple of blocks away.   


_‘You know, Dr Lamb, I saw you in my dreams, too.’_   


Dr Lamb smiles, answers all his questions, makes notes in that small black notebook of hers.   


The folder with the case about the apprehended killer’s mother keeps falling off the shelf and turning up on his table. Ed had to return it back to the shelf twice over the last week.   


_‘Edward, dreams only reflect our inner fears. They are but jokes of the unconscious. And people... People will be dying no matter what.’_   


He believes her, because he wants so much to believe her words.  


It is five days before Morgan Lamb’s murder.


End file.
